The strong growth in demand for portable consumer electronics is driving the need for high-capacity storage devices. Non-volatile semiconductor memory devices, such as flash memory storage cards, are becoming widely used to meet the ever-growing demands on digital information storage and exchange. Their portability, versatility and rugged design, along with their high reliability and large capacity, have made such memory devices ideal for use in a wide variety of electronic devices, including for example digital cameras, digital music players, video game consoles, PDAs and cellular telephones.
Given the advantages of non-volatile memory devices, there is currently a push to use them as solid state drives (SSDs) in enterprise datacenters in the place of traditional hard disk drives (HDDs). In particular, because SSDs store data electronically and do not require the mechanical interface of an HDD, SSDs can read and write data more quickly than HDDs. Another feature of the electronic versus mechanical interface is that SSDs tend to last longer, and use less power for read/write operations.
The amount of data that is being generated and stored on a daily basis is growing rapidly, placing more and more demand on datacenters. With recent advances in SSD technology, SSD storage capacity has recently surpassed HDD storage capacity, and SSDs are scaling at a faster rate than HDDs. However, meeting data demands in enterprise datacenters remains a constant problem.
DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
FIG. 1 is a flowchart for forming a semiconductor device according to embodiments of the present technology.
FIG. 2 is a front view of a semiconductor wafer showing a first major surface of the wafer.
FIG. 3 is an enlarged perspective view of a memory cluster at a step in the fabrication of the semiconductor device according to embodiments of the present technology.
FIG. 4 is an enlarged perspective view of a memory cluster at a further step in the fabrication of the semiconductor device according to embodiments of the present technology.
FIG. 5 is a top view of a first method of electrical connection of the controller die and optical module to the memory cluster on the wafer.
FIG. 6 is a cross-sectional edge view of a second method of electrical connection of the controller die and optical module to the memory cluster on the wafer.
FIG. 7 is a cross-sectional edge view of a memory cluster of FIG. 4 according to embodiments of the present technology.
FIG. 8 is a cross-sectional edge view of a memory cluster at another step in the fabrication of the semiconductor device according to embodiments of the present technology.
FIG. 9 is a cross-sectional edge view of at a further step in the fabrication of the semiconductor device according to embodiments of the present technology showing a number of memory clusters stacked on top of each other on wafers.
FIG. 10 is a perspective edge view of a semiconductor device including a number of stacked wafers according to embodiments of the present technology.
FIG. 11 is a top view of clusters of semiconductor die formed on a wafer according to an alternative embodiment of the present technology.
FIGS. 12 and 13 are edge views illustrating communication between a host device and a semiconductor device according to embodiments of the present technology.
FIG. 14 is a block diagram of an example of an optical module for use with embodiments of the present technology.
FIGS. 15 and 16 are perspective and cross-sectional edge views, respectively, of a semiconductor device according to a further embodiment of the present technology.